ausculture extra

Grey Sunday

2010-02-07T13:35:21Z

So here we are, one year on from ‘Black Saturday’. Many of those most directly affected still feel unable to take part in the many events set up to mark the day – it’s all too raw still. Even the sound of media choppers overhead has an unwelcome association with that day.

For others, attempts to use memorial services, music, art and media to process the horrific events of that day began early. A televised memorial service was held 15 days after the disaster. This seemed a very short amount of time to allow – the body count was still being established, and communities were being threatened with new bushfires. However, it was sensitively done and hosted with sober empathy by ABC News Victoria anchor Ian Henderson.

A multicultural memorial service – Venerable Chi Kwang Sunim, Abbess of the Seon Centre, Kinglake speaks on behalf of Buddhists

An art exhibition was put together from melted remnants just 7 weeks after the fires. Way too soon. And the image, below-left, of the artist curled up atop a burned-out Holden must have been deeply upsetting to many. Ali Griffin had lost her home in the fires. But the subject matter she was dealing with was loss of life, and that’s something else again.

‘Callous or cathartic?’ asks The Age, as Ali Griffin poses for her exhibition, Resurrected, left Right, a limited edition print of the fires sells on the Trading Post website for $289

A wander round Borders turns up no shortage of coffee table books on Black Saturday. Commerce. It can immediately sully things. Original intent can be lost in the translation to a retail commodity, the sale of which nets several parties a profit. The print, above-right, is available right now from tradingpost.com.au. 20% of proceeds go to charity, so I guess that’s one up on most of the books. But I find it hard to get my head around the concept of choosing to be reminded of Black Saturday every time you walked past it.

Marysville: In Loving Memory is a free short-run booklet of photographs by David Casey of Marysville before the fires – it was in print by March last year and available to visitors
The annual School Spectacular in December spent nearly quarter of an hour on the theme of the fires; here, a five-piece brass ensemble plays a wordless Auld Lang Syne standing on a huge collage representing Black Saturday
Alex Fettling collaborates with his father to turn the mangled remains of his Bendigo home possessions into art – their Clandestine exhibition
Aftermath – the Tribute – take a listen

Aftermath is a song penned by StellaQ just three days after the fires. An acoustic guitar backs Stella’s poignant lyrics, as she sings of her brother’s fight to save his home from the flames. I found it on the Contribute section of abc.net.au, which is full of posts, images and video relating to the February Bushfires. You can hear the track in full on Stella’s MySpace page. Continuing a tradition spanning human history, folk music transitions events into folklore.

Images: ABC, Channel 7, and as linked

Double standards on singles court

2010-02-02T07:55:02Z

Women have long sought equal pay for equal work. Which is fair. But actually the work can fall well short of equal.

My experience with female executives has been a consistent trend of working shorter hours than their male counterparts and rushing off home to be mum while their subordinates are left to do the hard graft, meet the tight deadline and make them look good. During the day, too, plenty of family crises involving leaving early, taking an extra hour at lunchtime or every other call being a personal one of an afternoon. And the impact of the boss not giving 110% (or maybe even 80) can be profound. Because it’s just ‘the way things are’ you might not notice that much. But consider the male executive who, say, has an affair. And everyone in the office knows his mind isn’t properly on his work, and is directly impacted by that. Well that level of performance degradation can be the norm for a female exec struggling to balance work and home life.

For men, it’s the elephant in the room, but for women, such observations are often seen as sexist. Well positive discrimination is still discrimination – in this case against men. While seldom stated so categorically, this reality isn’t lost on the business world, which tends not to pay the eighty percenters as much.

On the tennis court, women now get equal prize money to the men. But they play a maximum of 3 sets instead of 5! Do women run half marathons instead of full ones? No. There’s no earthly reason I can see that a professional female player couldn’t manage a 5-setter if they needed to. In fact, to assume they can’t seems insulting – a relic attitude of the Victorian era.

Grand slam champions of different eras: Suzanne Lenglen won Wimbledon 5 times from 1919-25, but lets face it wouldn’t get a look-in against Serena Williams

The conclusion of the Australian Open last weekend nicely illustrates the disparity for the spectator. The results were greatly affected by the amount of court time each player had had. In the men’s draw, Roger Federer got to the final by beating Tsonga, who’d just got through two 5-setters back-to-back, while Andy Murray had fended off Cilic in a 4-setter. (Federer had narrowly averted a 5-setter in the quarter finals against Davydenko.) These epic battles colour the men’s game and lend significance to the final victory. Be honest – how many unforgettable women’s finals have there been?

In the women’s draw, both Serena Williams and Justine Henin picked up places in the final from 2-set matches. Williams had played one 3-setter in the 6 previous rounds and Henin 2. Their other matches were all just two sets. Williams struggles in long matches. Under men’s singles scoring, as she and Henin had one set apiece, the third set wouldn’t have been enough to get her the silverware and things would have started getting interesting.

In total, Williams played 15 sets during the tournament and Henin 16. Federer and Murray each played 22. So the girls played just 70% as many sets as the boys. Yet Williams and Federer each walk away with $2.1m. Doesn’t sound very fair to me.

*ducks for cover*

Image, right: AP

“Excuse my beauty” – Quoting from 2009

2010-01-01T11:39:42Z

The vacuum left by Big Brother has been filled by Twitter this year, which, just like the reality TV show, contains the good, the bad and the beautiful...

“Why get married? Two words: white goods. We have dubbed the washing machine ‘Jesus’ – it performs miracles.” – Angie Hart (@angiehartmusic)

“As small as a frog my parents said!” – Delta Goodrem (@delta_goodrem) on being born 12 weeks premature

“A minute’s Twitter silence is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. While you pansies are quietly remembering, I’m going to skullfuck an arsonist.” – Kevin Fuckin' Rudd (@KevinFuckinRudd)

“For those who keep asking: I am 173cm tall. Or as I like to call it, ‘Fun Size’.” – Rove McManus (@Rove1974)

“Humans are amazing...will elaborate later.” – Charlie Pickering (@charliepick)

“Is it ok to let my dog eat his vomit? His heartworm tablet’s in there. He needs it back inside.” – Claire Hooper (@hoopthereitis)

“Saw my first red back spider for real. She was quite pretty (even for a deadly eight legged nightmare).” – scream-queen Efisia (@01000101)

“Has anyone lost a pretty black elephant with broken-off feet and half a trunk? I found her in the petrol station.” – Lisa Mitchell (@lisahmitchell), just before leaving for her international tour

“The kids introduced me to the wonders of worm farming, what to do with worm poo...” – Kevin Rudd (@kevinruddpm)

“So just to be clear... does @kevinruddpm want to stop me from posting pictures of ballbags? Because I will motherfucking protest that shit.” – Jess McGuire (@jessmcguire)

“19 year old Syd kid. EXCUSE MY BEAUTY.” – Twitter bio of Dawson fan Jacqui Gaut (@jackgotjacked)

“I love Twitter, but every once in awhile, I’m like ‘Why waste time here when I can be spanking my dick?’ 2 minutes later I’m Tweeting again.” – Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith)

Silent Bob evidently not so silent when talking about his mate, Dick. And talking of dicks, time to sojourn from Twitter to Barnaby Joyce (though I’m sure Twitter isn’t safe from him)...

“Labor is so typical - every time they come in, marvellous ideas; it’s all, you know, fluffy clouds and funny spots on cows’ bottoms. But they never really are able to handle money.” – Barnaby Joyce, deluding himself that the country would ever allow him to hold the purse strings!

“Government is the entertainment arm of the corporate sector.” – RocKwiz, 17/10/09

“One regrets ever meeting Mr Grech!” – Malcolm Turnbull, post Utegate

“D’you know what they call a place that breaks the law every time there’s an emergency? Dictatorship.” – Dr Cal Lightman, terrorist attacks ep, Lie To Me

“My advice to Tony Abbott: don’t wear the budgie-smugglers – I think the budgie’s escaped.” – Barry Crocker

“At times all three of them, in their own ways, have been polarising.” – Tony Abbott on Kevin Andrews, Bronwyn Bishop and Philip Ruddock, his new front-benchers

No shit! And from a rare moment of truth in politics to a rare moment of truth in advertising:

“I mean, even at $3.90, I wouldn’t be seen dead in them.” – Rivers ad for plastic clogs

“This is where I get my sense of humour from – here in Adelaide, Ladies and Gentlemen.” – David Koch

“I have three cats. I am one cat away from a story on A Current Affair.” – Wil Anderson, Weekend, The Age, 24/1/09

“When they’re about 9 or 10 buy them some stock.” – money advice for parents on NBC’s Today

“Sounds too good to be true? That’s what we're about to discover!” – Mr T, introducing FlavorWave Oven infomercial

“...My grandfather was a plumber ... If you'd let me on stage he would put a toilet in your club.” – Michael Bublé

Worked out well for Bublé – now he’s flushed with success. Back in Australia, Network 7’s substitute for trustworthy media was peddling deadly poisons:

“Botox - why it really is good for you!” – promo for Today Tonight

“What is really sad is that her pert, perfectly in-proportion B-cup breasts become monstrous $10,800 C-cup half cantaloupes perched ludicrously on her svelte chest.” – Mark Ellis, The Age, 10/9/09, on an 18-yo getting a boob-job on doco About Women

“Two eyes?” – Kochie to Fifi Box, as she holds a large boa constrictor

“I change boyfriends like I change my underwear.” – Jessica, Aussie Ladette To Lady, 2009 (second season)

Clean-undied Jessica, who, after a final week Ladette party was still wasted the next morning, came third – Victoria can be proud!

And finally to another Victorian – one with very different sensibilities. Our favourite ex-blogger writes about danger addict Bear Grylls, who offers ‘useful’ survival tips on SBS’s Man Vs Wild...

“I don’t care how parched or stuck in the middle of the Kenyan desert I may be one day, I absolutely refuse to pick up a giant elephant dropping and squeeze it into my mouth until juice comes out.” – Marieke Hardy, The Age, 19/11/09

Network Ten sucks donkey balls!

2009-12-22T14:26:39Z

Dear Brain-dead Network Ten executives,

When a valued [hah!] viewer decides to watch episode one of a new series, lets say Stargate: Universe, they generally look it up in the latest TV guide. This means it’s a really bad idea to change the schedule at the last minute. If you do, they’ll probably miss the first hour and are likely to give up on the series altogether.

If, thanks to a helpful website, they’ve established that you don’t understand that basic concept and have indeed changed the screening times, they’re probably going to want to persevere to the second ep. So obviously you’re not going to screw around with your viewing public two weeks in a row, right?! Without – again – giving the printed guides enough notice to publish the correct times?

I mean, even the most diligent viewer would then face the possibility that the helpful website’s RSS feed would go squiffy and they wouldn’t find out about the last minute change until it was too late. So they’d miss the second ep and be really pissed off.

What would be the point of that? What could be the mega-urgent reason for changing round SGU and Supernatural? Something you didn’t know about five days before, and couldn’t wait another week? Oh, but of course: it just makes you feel like a proper TV executive! “Right, look, we need to change these round right away? Got it?!”

Well, when the ratings for your expensive new fresh-from-pay-TV series come back as ‘disappointing’ it will have nothing to do with the quality of the show. And virtually nothing to do with whether it was on at 8.30 or 9.30 pm. It will be because you fuckwits have made it unwatchable!

So make your next executive decision the only good one possible: sack yourselves.

Yours sincerely,

Irate Ex-viewer

Update: SGU pulled after just 3 eps! That’s even worse than Channel 9’s treatment of Fringe fans, who were furious when it was pulled after just a few weeks. (They eventually brought it back, messed around with the episode order, then pulled it again!)

Surprise, surprise, SGU rated poorly on Monday with just 487,000 viewers. Yeah, Ten execs, you succeeded in driving away your audience!

This shows just how crap a concept the Australian ‘non-ratings season’ is. Officially, the networks don’t poll ratings over the summer. But in reality they obviously watch them like a hawk – they just don’t let the advertisers in on the results! On Boxing Day 2003, Ten got a shock from viewing figures of 2.4m for World Idol – as the SMH succinctly put it “viewers don't disappear in summer; they wait for a program they can give a damn about.”

So advertisers get treated as badly by the commercial networks as the viewers. Free market not really working out for us in TV Land, I think it’s safe to say!

Season’s Greetings

2009-12-21T16:02:07Z

Santa’s true colours

What’s the difference between Santa Claus and Tiger Woods? Santa stopped at three hoes!

Season’s greetings and all the best for 2010 from the ausculture team.

CFA website melts under the heat

2009-12-16T05:49:29Z

On the days of extreme fire danger around Black Saturday 10 months ago the CFA website was frustrating people across Victoria by listing fires from across the State, from the most serious wildfires to small domestic fires, on the same Incident Summary page. It’s true that you could click the Region heading so all incidents in your region (still a vast area) would appear together, but as soon as you refreshed the page you’d be back to the view below.

After the revelations over CFA senior management incompetence and lack of information reaching people in high-risk areas, you’d think that on the top of the list of things to overhaul for this fire season would be the CFA website. Yet, on the first day of extreme fire danger, the Incident Summary and Warnings & Advice pages are down!!!

Which may leave some people resorting to Twitter for news on the wildfire on the Great Ocean Road.

If the CFA resource has gone down due to the volume of hits from concerned residents across Victoria that shows a truly shocking level of incompetence. That, after all, is the site’s purpose!

If all those vows that the likes of Black Saturday must never be allowed to occur again are to be anything other than empty rhetoric, the authorities are going to have to get with the program. Step No. 1: sack operational Chief Officer Russell Rees – the man who, on February 7th, didn’t even know there was a fire ecologist on-site making accurate maps projecting the movement of the fire heading for Marysville; the maps were never utilised. Co-ordinated Headquarters? Yeah, right!

Update: Well, after several hours, the Incident Summary page came back up late-pm and it’s the same mess of irrelevant, unsorted information: Region 14 structure, Region 24 false alarm, Region 8 ‘Other’, Region 22 structure. Do the CFA really think people are going to go to their website to see whether the house they’re in has a chip pan fire?!

The Great Ocean Road fire and many others were brought under control by the excellent work of the CFA volunteers, who do their best in the face of normally unseen frustration with the senior management.

Pushing the boundaries: Safran nails it!

2009-12-10T10:02:28Z

Well last night’s Race Relations ep was pretty full-on. I have a tough skin, but seeing 4 inch nails get driven into John Safran’s hands was confronting even for me. But hey, nothing wrong with that. If TV was all Smurf collectors and peony pruning it’d be a very lacklustre medium. (There are whole channels like that, so I guess lacklustre floats some people’s boats.)

Not, sadly, Andrew Bolt

The episode’s rating, though, was questionable: M – adult themes and course language. M is generally considered to mean that it may be unsuitable for people under the age of 13. There’s a higher AV 15+ rating, and that’s the highest rating on Australian free-to-air TV. There’s no rating for content suitable only for those 18 and over, and in practice this means a lot of non-violent content that should be rated 18 gets an M rating and violent content gets M or AV 15+. Every show gets rated, which would lead you to think that we care about what content developing minds are exposed to. Yet the lack of an 18 rating demonstrates that we clearly don’t!

Anyway, practising Jew, Safran, flies off to Bulacan in the Philippines to take part in a Christian crucifixion ceremony as the ultimate way to burn his Jewish bridges so as to be free to date a Eurasian! (It might also have something to do with getting good TV ratings. )

As a religion that sets itself apart by having had its prophet uniquely nailed to a cross, it seems odd that this festival should do this to around three men every year. But then odd and religion go together like hammer and nail...

Safran is certainly pushing the boundaries. Let’s hope he doesn’t get crucified by the critics...

► John Safran’s Race Relations encore, tonight at 9pm on ABC2

Image: ABC

Rise of deniosaurs spells disaster for Libs

2009-12-03T11:29:44Z

LOL! Abbott and Bishop leading the Libs – Christmas has come early for ausculture!

First came the stocking fillers: Barnaby Joyce, Nationals Senate leader, belligerently traipsing Bob Carter, the one climate change denying scientist he could muster, across drought-ravaged country Australia telling farmers there was zero warming between 1958 and 2005! And then Steve Fielding calling for a Royal Commission into the climate change science* after a Senate deal to wrap up the ETS debate – “The temptation to weep with laughter is great” said Chris Uhlmann on Monday’s 7.30 Report.

And now the Liberal Party joins the Nationals to form a hilarious double-act of out-of-touch polices** and bombastic sound bites.

“Shit happens, Tony!” beams Tony Abbott on ABC’s Lateline

What the majority of the Australian public wants is a set of effective policies to address climate change, the effects of which are starting to look scarily catastrophic. That’s what we gave Labor a mandate to do. Unfortunately, Rudd’s been bowing to pressure from the worst polluters and promising them absurdly generous ‘permits to pollute’, something famously denounced by his own lead climate change advisor, Ross Garnaut, as well as The Greens and many others. Rudd has been trying to conjure up a scheme which no one really feels the effects of. Which, of course, defeats the whole point: if the tax on a packet of cigarettes was 20 cents just how many people would give up smoking?

Elsewhere in the developed world, conservatives have been supportive of emissions trading schemes. The EU, an alliance of 27 countries ranging from left- to extreme right-wing, already has one. Even the US has one, albeit watered down. Leaving Australia very much on the outer.

So as funny as it is to have a Leader of the Opposition who only a month ago said “I think the climate change argument is crap!”, at the end of the day the joke’s on us.

* Funny enough in itself – “Right, we need to summon Dr. David Suzuki to testify in Canberra – I mean, how are we supposed to accept him as a serious environmentalist when he keeps manufacturing petrol motorbikes?”

** Well, not so much policies as opposition to policies – all the more ironic as the Coalition would have brought in their own ETS had they retained power.

Image: ABC

Man places Wanted ad for goats

2009-11-02T14:23:18Z

Strange things happen back ’o Bourke...

Racist African Americans

2009-10-28T21:36:37Z

Well, in the words of John Safran, I’ve been thinkin’!

John Safran’s Race Relations uncovers some lurking racism

There was certainly racism in the already controversial second ep of John Safran’s Race Relations, but it didn’t emanate from white-turned-black Safran.

Discrimination engenders discrimination by those discriminated against. (You might need a moment to get your head round that sentence – I know I did! ) The Jews in Israel, for instance, were badly discriminated against, and now go out of their way to persecute the Palestinians. So it is with racism. An era of whites-only cliques in the US has given way to blacks-only cliques. The word ‘nigger’ was once used by whites in order to offend blacks, but is now used extensively by blacks but considered offensive if spoken by a white. That is racism! It’s just reverse racism.

We are one race – the human race – and we should all be able to speak the same words.

The term ‘black brother’ is another divisive term. As ‘mate’ traditionally refers to a white Australian male the white speaker could imagine being close to, ‘black brother’ of course is the same dodgy tribalism with a different skin colour. Shortened to ‘brother’ or ‘bro’, it can sometimes mean someone non-black, but the predominant (non-sibling) usage is coloured by racism.

‘Mate’ carries some historical baggage – which generations of Australians have never even considered – but is used by many young Australians without bias. Hungry Beast did an interesting piece last week about us now being ‘post race’. (Look out for the clever ending.) Although playing for laughs, they were making a serious point about subtleties of context. In short they were saying that something is offensive if it offends! They played around with the idea of white people using words like ‘nigger’ and ‘wog’ and it being fine sometimes. Trouble is (and this wasn’t mentioned in the clip) it’s only fine if it offends nobody at all. Not the black guy, not the white guy, and not the other guy who happens to be getting a refill at the water cooler.

I was chatting with a (drunk) bar owner in Wangaratta recently, and he called himself ‘wog’ over and over with relish. I didn’t like it. It offended me. It said to me “I don’t feel I’m like you” and that doesn’t fit with my view of a single human race. So the best thing is to just let all the pejorative words fall out of use. That’s true post race.

Image: ABC

Racy Safran

2009-10-27T21:24:00Z

Well, having given you a twitter teaser I should probably be penning something insightful about this evening’s Race Relations ep, in which John Safran gets a head-to-toe makeover in order to become a (trojan) proud black brother. But instead, I’ll borrow the words of The Age’s Michael Lallo:

Tonight, thousands of Australians will tune into Race Relations with the sole intention of getting offended. Yes, it’s the episode in which John Safran paints his face black – and on our government-funded broadcaster, no less! Left-wing hypocrisy alert! After all, what’s the difference between Safran and those blokes who did the blackface skit on Hey Hey, It’s Saturday? No doubt our conservative columnists and AM talkback hosts will have plenty of theories, most likely involving some combination of chardonnay, political correctness and “fancy university degrees”. But the difference is actually quite simple. The “blackface” look – boot polish, white lips and Afro wigs, as seen on Hey Hey the other week – was traditionally used to make black people look stupid. Safran does not do this. Instead, he genuinely tries to disguise himself as a black man to see what it’s like. There’s nothing racist or hypocritical about it. Sure, he deliberately pushes people’s buttons – but in a way that provokes interesting questions and makes us think. What’s more, Race Relations is damn entertaining. It would be a shame to see all this overshadowed by simple-minded populist outrage.

Hungry Beast did a great piece on the media’s fanning the flames of moral outrage so they can cash in on it:

And lookie there – at the end of the clip. If it isn’t the media trying to do exactly that to Safran even before the ep goes to air!

► John Safran’s Race Relations, tonight, 9.30, ABC1

Clip: ABC

SMH, Bill McKibben and, um, me

2009-10-24T21:57:00Z

Yes, well despite their obvious journalistic inexperience, *chortle* The Sydney Morning Herald and journo and 350.org founder Bill McKibben have had their words put alongside mine in a post at Peak Energy. (You could almost call this a trend, ausculture having so recently been picked up by TV Tonight. Then again, I might post nothing more than lame 7 News screen-grabs for the next 6 months!)

Gav at Peak Energy does a great job of pulling together interesting pieces from all over the web, including science and technology sites and those focussed on energy sustainability for the future. The site’s name is based around the concept of ‘peak oil’ – the point at which oil production goes into decline, which has apparently already been reached in the US, the third largest oil producer. Unfortunately, there are still vast amounts of coal underground. And because Australia doesn’t value add enough, we’re as touchy as a developing world country about the idea of leaving ours there.

Lighting the way to 350 ppm – lantern-holders at Clovelly, just south of Sydney

The arguments from the ‘deniosaurs’ are inane and spurious – a crock. The likes of Andrew Bolt spew them out endlessly, and many Australians seize on them triumphantly, comforting themselves like a five-year-old who’s been told their dead bunny is going to pet heaven. If the consequences of inaction weren’t so serious, it’d be almost funny. Like those who say 350 ppm CO2 represents 0.000035% and is inconsequential. This is both out by several decimal places and just plain ridiculous. Plant and animal life on this planet actually depends on a moderate greenhouse effect, and this is extremely well understood to be caused by the water vapour, CO2, methane and other gasses in the atmosphere. Without a natural greenhouse effect, the world would be about 33°C colder – a very large snowball!

Bolt shoots his bolt

In May this year, Andrew Bolt posted a rant entitled ‘World still cooling’ on his News Ltd blog. Now if you’ve read my article on fluctuations in solar output, you’ll know there are many factors that affect Earth’s median temperature – like varying solar output – and even if that claim were true it would be merely a restbite. But what was interesting – well, horrifying – was the way he totally misrepresented the scientific data.

The Alfred Wegener Institute had posted a press release on a recent data-gathering flight over the arctic. This was not an announcement of results, as can easily be told by the title – ‘Research aircraft Polar 5 finishes Arctic expedition – Unique measurement flights in the central Arctic completed’. It made a passing reference to ice measurements: “Multiple flights northwards from various stations showed an ice thickness between 2.5 (two years old ice in the vicinity of the North Pole) and 4 metres (perennial ice in Canadian offshore regions).” Somehow, the Canada Free Press managed to morph this into ‘North Pole Sea Ice twice as thick as expected’, which wasn’t what they were saying at all. In fact, the 2.5m at the north pole was only just thick enough to land on. Bolt had seized on a headline that supported his bizarre viewpoint that the icecaps are in great shape and run with it without checking back to the source document. That’s bad journalism. It’s appalling journalism.

Six weeks later, the Institute released a second press release – ‘New record Arctic sea ice cover minimum? Climate researchers from Bremerhaven and Hamburg present new prognoses.’ Quote: “We have computed in this year’s first prognosis that the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean will lie at the end of the summer with at least 28 % probability under that of 2007 – the year with the lowest-ever measured ice extension.” Something tells me you will never hear mention of that in any Bolt blog or column. Buyer beware!

Image: solness.com.au for 350.org

Who’s getting involved in International Day of Climate Action?

2009-10-23T22:06:49Z

Well, while a slightly disappointing 2.3% of blogs taking part in Blog Action Day 2009 were Australian, our involvement in today’s International Day of Climate Action is an impressive 4.2%. The day, organised by 350.org, involves a number of ‘actions’ – events in which people raise awareness of the new science showing that limiting carbon to 480 parts per million isn’t enough to prevent catastrophic climate change and that we need to urgently get it down to 350.

There are currently 4,800 actions lodged on their website globally, from 179 countries, of which our 201 make up the 4.2%. (Of course in theory 1 event could involve anywhere from one person to a country’s entire population, but it’s a fair guide.)

Nearly half of Australia’s events are taking place outside capital cities, but focussing on the capitals does enable me to compare participation around the country – the more events per hundred thousand people the higher the participation.

Hobart comes out on top, with Darwin a close second. Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra are all similar, at about half the participation. Brisbane is slightly below the previous three. Adelaide and Perth have less than a quarter of Hobart’s events per capita. Adelaide is the biggest surprise here – no resources boom to distract them and some fierce environmental impacts recently.

Then again, Adelaide doesn’t have The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald. The big surprise for Brisbane is that The Courier-Mail – a News Ltd. paper – has an environmentalist on the staff! And I’m not talking one of those woolly “lets protect the Great Barrier Reef because it’s good for tourism” types, I’m talking “you might want to think twice before chaining yourself to a coal conveyor belt because having a criminal record is no fun”. Graham Readfearn, ausculture salutes you!

The other News Corp papers will, of course, be running stories on today’s demonstrations. But don’t count on them to ‘waste’ a lot of column inches explaining the importance of applying pressure to the Rudd Government ahead of December’s pivotal conference in Copenhagen. That’s not in Murdoch’s script.

If you see lots of human 350s on the news and have questions, you’ll need to do the research for yourself. Future generations will be glad you took the trouble.

Image: 350.org

Blog Action what?

2009-10-16T13:03:50Z

Well globally Blog Action Day 2009 was a big success. There were 27,000 posts from 155 countries, including one from UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and another from The White House. And Kevin Rudd, the man who wants to jet around the planet (leaving a massive carbon footprint) ‘taking a lead on climate change’? Nada.

What then of the major Aussie news sites that run such vital stories as ‘Whole turtle found inside groper’ and ‘Grab a slice of the Big Pineapple’? Zilch.

But at least the vibrant aussosphere is showing the world how much we care about the issue of climate change? Um, not really. Just 301 of the 13,200 sites that registered at www.blogactionday.org are Australian.

In fact, few Australians seem to have even heard of the annual Blog Action Day, which was started in 2007 in Sydney!

Environmentally, we arguably have the most to be embarrassed about of any country in the world, having the highest annual release of CO2 per capita, even above that of the US. 25 tonnes per year. It ought to be 2.

We also have more to lose than most other countries, our precious rainfall being governed by some very fragile, temperature-dependent oceanic systems.

Not only will inaction now cost more financially in the future, there will be a high price in human lives, too. We need to stop faffing about and get with the programme. If we resign ourselves to being a nation of Steve Fieldings we consign ourselves to a future living hell.

Globe warming despite solar cooling

2009-10-15T12:50:00Z

Today is Blog Action Day 2009. Many thousands of bloggers writing in scores of tongues are posting on this year’s subject – Climate Change – in an attempt to open up debate and inspire action.

There are few people left claiming that the climate is not changing, so there are two main camps: Those who believe the change is manmade and those who believe it’s part of a natural cycle. There is science to back both up. But why assume it has to be one or the other?

There are many natural cycles that affect our environment, not least of which is that affecting the thing that actually warms our planet – The Sun. Hot plasma moves in two great circuits deep within The Sun together known as The Great Conveyor Belt. When the area near the surface is hot and active sunspots form – small slightly cooler areas. There is a direct correlation: the more sunspots, the greater the intensity of solar radiation.

The Great Conveyor Belt has been determined by NASA scientists to have been travelling at around 1 metre per second steadily for the last century. However, now (based on sunspot observations) it has slowed, with the northern branch reduced to 0.75 m/s and the southern branch way down at 0.35 m/s. The result is that sunspot activity, which normally varies on a predictable 11 year cycle, is reducing, and the cycle is slowing down. NASA predicts the next peak of activity (after the current one) to be “off the bottom of the charts”, ie extremely low, with a corresponding reduction in The Sun’s output.

Graph showing NASA’s predictions for sunspot activity as of 2006 (Actual sunspot activity for current Cycle 24 so far is below that predicted)

As records for top temperatures continue to be regularly broken, such as the 46 degrees Celsius reached by Melbourne on Black Saturday this year, this is of great concern. If revised climate change projections are already close to ‘worst case scenario’ levels, as many climate scientists are saying, how bad will things get when solar output returns to normal levels? This might not happen for another 30 or more years, but happen it will. And if we haven’t done all we can to reverse manmade climate change by then... ...we’re toast!

Graphics: NASA Science; www.blogactionday.org